A passenger aboard a recent Air France flight caused trouble to come calling. On March 21, a flight from Paris, France, to Pointe-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe, was forced to turn around after a passenger misplaced their phone, One Mile at a Time reported.
The Independent reported that the incident occurred one hour after the plane’s departure. Despite crew members and passengers assisting in the mid-air search for the phone, it could not be located.
Thus, the aircraft was forced to turn around as a “precautionary measure,” per the outlet. The plane landed back in Paris two hours after it originally left, One Mile at a Time reported.
Once they touched down, ground personnel boarded the plane and conducted another search for the phone. Their efforts were apparently successful, as the aircraft once again departed Paris shortly thereafter, the outlet reported.
Plane Passenger Loses Phone Amid Flight, Forcing Aircraft to Turn Around
Air France did not clarify why turning the plane around was a necessary response to a missing phone. However, the outlets speculated that the device’s lithium-ion batteries were to blame.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, devices with such batteries can overheat and cause fires aboard planes. Between 2006 and 2025, there have been 600 verified lithium battery incidents on planes, the FAA reported.
Cell phones aren’t the only devices that use lithium batteries. Vapes, laptops, and portable battery packs also use flammable items, meaning that incidents have only increased in recent years.
As such, many Asian airlines have begun enacting stricter rules about lithium batteries aboard planes, CNN reported. According to the outlet, those rules include keeping lithium battery-containing items in the overhead compartment during a flight, not using power banks while aboard the plane, and not charging portable battery packs in the flight’s USB ports.
“Lithium batteries could act as an ignition source themselves, or as a source of fuel for a fire initiated elsewhere,” aerospace design expert Sonya Brown told the outlet. “The potential risk as an ignition source is increased when lithium batteries are damaged, swollen, include manufacturing defects, are over-charged or over-heated.”
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